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HELVETE A JOURNAL OF BLACK METAL THEORY Issue 1: Incipit Winter 2013 HELVETE A JOURNAL OF BLACK METAL THEORY Issue 1: Incipit Winter 2013 ISSN: 2326-683X Helvete: A Journal of Black Metal Theory is also available in open-access forM: http://helvetejournal.org EDITORS Amelia IshMael Zareen Price Aspasia Stephanou Ben Woodard LAYOUT EDITOR Andrew DotY http://creativecomMons.org/licenses/bY-nc-nd/3.0/ Published bY punctuM books Brooklyn, New York http://punctuMbooks.com ISBN-13: 978-0615758282 ISBN-10: 0615758282 1 DILATION: EDITOR’S PREFACE Zareen Price 5 OPEN A VEIN: SUICIDAL BLACK METAL AND ENLIGHTENMENT Janet Silk ASDF 21 AT THE EDGE OF THE SMOKING POOL OF DEATH: WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Timothy Morton 29 BAPTISM OR DEATH: BLACK METAL IN CONTEMPORARY ART, BIRTH OF A NEW AESTHETIC CATEGORY Elodie Lesourd THE NIGHT IS NO LONGER DEAD; IT HAS A LIFE OF ITS OWN Amelia Ishmael FROSTBITE ON MY FEET: REPRESENTATIONS OF WALKING 45 IN BLACK METAL VISUAL CULTURE David Prescott-Steed BLACK METAL MACHINE: THEORIZING INDUSTRIAL BLACK 69 METAL Daniel Lukes THIS IS ARMAGEDDON: THE DAWN MOTIF AND BLACK 95 METAL’S ANTI-CHRISTIAN PROJECT Joel Cotterell DILATION EDITOR’S PREFACE Zareen Price The open door and gaping shadowy halls stand wide in cold splendor of marble and stone / And from pulpits appear faces that stare, cruel mockeries of the closest in life now gone1 This is an opening. These are the first words, the opening text, of a project I conceived late in the winter of 2011. Melancology, the second iteration of the Black Metal TheorY SYmposium, had recentlY oozed through London, and the internet-lurking underground’s immune reaction to the intermingling of Black Metal and theorY was seeminglY at its most captious. In a waY, the forumites and blog commenters were right: Black Metal theorY is an infection in danger of becoming an epidemic. BrooklYn’s Hideous Gnosis was patient zero, and Dublin’s P.E.S.T. has brought the count of infected to three. But these were relativelY controlled environments, bounded to a particular point in space and time—Helvete is a metastasizing agent that threatens to spread through the venous pathways of the internet. This is an opening. It is a tear in the skin, stretching wider and wider to expose the erstwhile sterile cavities of the bodY. The infection enters. But whose skin is torn? Who is the infector? Who is infected? The web is awash with a repeated answer: Black Metal theorY is the infection of Black Metal bY theorY; it is the brutal vivisection of Black Metal’s heretofore incorrupt bodY. ZAREEN PRICE Here we have onlY half of one side of the wrong storY. Instead, we should observe how, even if only in ideal cases, Black Metal and theory interpenetrate. They are like two questioning ichneumon wasps bonded in coital embrace, speared upon each other’s alloYed ovipositors, each depositing putrefYing seeds into the other’s bodY. TheY are no longer individuals, but neither are theY identical now that theY are forciblY conjoined in nigredo. As the masthead at Black Metal Theory intones: “Not black metal. Not theorY. Not not black metal. Not not theorY.”2 Standing far from pretensions to devise some Grand Unified TheorY of Black Metal, the practitioner of Black Metal theorY engages in the mutual blackening of theorY and Metal. I open the doors to the other side and step beyond mortality3 With the publication of Incipit, I have moved from conception to pregnancy to birth. The wasps’ bodies have been hollowed out as their children have glutted on organs theY too are developing, and finallY the larvae emerge. Like the wasps, the varied works in this volume have consumed me. MY bodY is opened, I am poured out in print. I mingle now with the authors and artists whose texts and images follow. While critics maY call this venture a hipster’s fad, Ovid reminds us—and the massive redundancy of the printed and digital versions of this journal assure us—we step beYond ourselves and into the text, and the text makes us immortal. Helvete is the sign of a fulfilled promise: Black Metal theorY will not die. And so this is an opening. The portal gapes, and we cross from one side to the other. It is a door through which manY further iterations of Black Metal theorY maY enter. It invites possession. In turn, possession invites metamorphosis. Helvete, I hope, will change. MY short tenure here has taught me a great deal about organizing and producing a publication. Much of this is mundane, but I expect to applY these lessons with a particular eYe to publishing more works that fall outside the purview of the established academic genres. We are a para-academic journal! We should not be beholden to rigid and arbitrarY norms, but rather we should use our freedom to encourage fecund experimentation. The journal’s future, then, is open, awaiting onlY the intervention of whatever forces or unclean spirits may enter to further blacken its pages. No beginning, no end / Words beyond words / Lead us in / Acts beyond acts4 Critics and supporters alike have overlooked this waiting potential, and thus theY tend to approach Black Metal theorY as merelY the production of dense, somnolent academic texts about Black Metal. Although this is certainlY an aspect of Black Metal theorY, it is not 2 DILATION: EDITOR’S PREFACE the whole, as it represents onlY the blackening of theorY bY Metal—or, in the worst cases, the mere imprisonment of Metal in theorY. Black Metal theorY is a practice composed of manY possible component practices. It is an artistic practice, a musical practice, a literarY practice, a theoretical practice. When it comes to us as theory, its words are an occult intervention, the acts of theorY possessed bY the outsider spirit of Metal. When it comes as music, its dissonant clangs and shrieked lYrics summon forth the dark avatars of theory to haunt us. It acts—upon us, Yet mostlY upon itself. Black Metal theorists reject any approach that privileges one of these practices above its fellows, and we especiallY refuse to countenance any call to return to the music itself. Black Metal theorY is an impure practice, aiming to destroY the integritY of Metal and theorY’s protective membranes. There is no essence, but onlY an opening. Whatever demonic or unclean forces that maY lodge themselves within are welcome. Bear this in mind as You pass through this opening and move onward to the squalling pages that follow. Starve the inclination to categorize a given work of Black Metal theory as “true” or “false,” and instead allow Yourself to be caught up in the practice. As I have said elsewhere and seeminglY in another life, the results of this experiment cannot be known in advance. Leap through the opening. Taste and see.5 ✶ ✶ ✶ A word or two of thanks are in order. ManY, manY people contributed to getting Helvete to print. First and foremost, I am grateful to this volume’s contributors for taking a leap of faith and joining this little enterprise. The same goes for Eileen JoY and her staff at punctum books—it is a brave publisher that takes on such an offbeat project in its Youth. A heartY thanks also to our editorial advisorY board for their comments and suggestions, and in particular to Nicola Masciandaro for encouraging me to start the journal. Furthermore, I am indebted to mY co-editors, Amelia Ishmael, Aspasia Stephanou, and Ben Woodard. Without Your dedication and occasional willingness to prod me back to life, this dead mote of rock we’re flYing on maY never have been subjected to Helvete. To all of You mentioned above, this journal is as much yours as it is mine—I hope You can be proud of it. Zareen Price Portland, 2012 NOTES 1 Negative Plane, “Angels of Veiled Bone,” Stained Glass Revelations (The Ajna Offensive, 2011). 3 ZAREEN PRICE 2 Nicola Masciandaro, Black Metal Theory, http://blackmetaltheorY.blogspot.com. Details about all three Black Metal theorY symposia mentioned above can also be found here. 3 Abigor, “Utopia Consumed,” Channeling the Quintessence of Satan (Napalm Records, 1999). 4 Dødsengel, “Towers of DerinkuYu,” Imperator (Barghest and Terratur Possessions, 2012). 5 Zareen Price, “You Were Talking About a Black Metal TheorY; What the Fuck Is That!!!,” The Lichenthrope, April 4, 2011, http://thelichenthrope.blogspot.com/2011/04/You-were-talking-about- black-metal.html. 4 OPEN A VEIN SUICIDAL BLACK METAL AND ENLIGHTENMENT1 Janet Silk Black Metal was born in suicide. The image of Per Yngve Ohlin (aka Dead) on the 1995 album cover of MaYhem’s Dawn of the Black Hearts, his blown-out brains oozing out of his shattered skull, is an icon that foreshadowed the emergence of Suicidal Black Metal (SBM) bands who skirt the edge between ideation and action.2 For bands such as Shining, Make a Change . Kill Yourself, and I Shalt Become, suicide and self-harm are cathexes; death is the ultimate life lesson—we must reflect on it, embrace it . and do it. Albert Camus articulates in The Myth of Sisyphus, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.”3 Within the broad spectrum of philosophical positions which Black Metal represents (such as nihilism, existentialism, satanism, and abjection) is SBM’s celebration of self-destruction. What might be the function of this celebration? Enlightenment is often described as an awakening of consciousness that is sustained. It is a station or place of insightful awareness about the nature of reality.